With The Dark Below, Destiny’s first expansion due out in little more than a week, Bungie has pushed our a rather game-changing update that alters the way higher level gear can be acquired and upgraded. Along with various fixes and tweaks and whatnot of course.

First of all, Exotic Weapons will no longer require Ascendent materials to upgrade (yay!), and they will start out a bit more buffed than before, although they will cap out at around the same levels. The last upgrade node for exotics will require a new Exotic Shard which can be purchased from Xur (on weekend) or created by breaking down other exotic gear.

Other changes include: marks can be used to purchase upgrade material from vendors, there will be more destination material drops and the Cryptarch reputation will level up a bit more slowly but give a chance for better Legendary equipment. The few Raid issues introduced by the more recent update have apparently been fixed also.

Quite a few exotic weapons and pieces of armor also received some changes, which are included in the changelog below.

Today’s patch includes the long-awaited arrival of Exotics weapon buffs, additional acquisition paths for destination upgrade materials, along with additional changes to exotic gear node upgrading in preparation for the soon-to-be-released expansion, The Dark Below. We’re also correcting issues induced by our more recent update to the Raid.

Weapons

Exotics
Exotic Weapons are designed to look, feel, and sound overpowered. At the same time, they are not supposed to break the balance of the game. We hope these weapons challenge the way players think about their loadouts. Exotics will be a constant work in-progress!

General

In preparation for the Dark Below, Exotic Armor and Weapons no longer require Ascendant Materials to upgrade

The final upgrade node of all Exotic Gear will require an Exotic Shard

Exotic Shards can be obtained by one of the following means:

Dismantling unwanted Exotics

Purchased from Xur for 7 Strange Coins

Exotics now start at a higher base Attack value and have a narrowed upgrade range to compensate